Two Jar Slave - 2017-05-08 Dick Himself is a great cyberpunk protagonist name.

Oscar Wildcat - 2017-05-08 It is a little mysterious why none of Phil's other works have been successfully adapted to screen. Ridley Scott claimed to be unable to finish Do Androids Dream, odd given the story was a trade paperback as Dick Himself once pointed out. I suppose they're afraid of another Zardoz, perish the thought!

Dick Himself popped the NOS on his plasteel rollerblades and let out a war whoop as he screamed down the old highway going 90, 100, 108kph, hot on the tail of the netfink corper scumbag Lester Crewcut. Acid rain whipped his eyes faster than Dick's faceplants could atomize it, and the broken warehouses of Old Old Seattle were a blur on both sides, standing frozen in zerotime like abandoned IP addresses. So much data, so much peepmeat, so many wrecked lives left high and dry when the corpwars sledged their way down the coast--except of course, it was almost never 'dry'.

Give your head a shake, Himself scolded himself. Crewcut is leading your jacked ass out of CityCore and into the deadlanes, the no-man's-land between corp turf. Must be risking getting tapped by a non-ent for a damn good reason, he thought, and I don't want to know what it is.

Tuning his eyeshade, Himself could make out Crewcut's ice-blue dreadlocks snapping back and forth as he bounded over potholes and the rusted-out gassers that dotted the road. Hell, since his pop-in upgrades at the clinic on Twosday, he could practically count the beads of sweat on Crewcut's exposed back. He's got moves, Himself admitted as Crewcut executed a slide dash under a ribbon of police tape. He's a point-oh corper shit bag, but he's got moves. Time to finish this.

Himself reached for his NutGun and cocked it twice. At this range, at this speed, he'd need to rely on wide spread over finesse. Spray and pray. In the back of his mind, Dick Himself was already tallying the price of a full-auto spread of X-Tip Smarts. This was going to cost him--but not as much as his dreadlocked friend up ahead, and it would be worth it to get back whatever Crewcut's corper overlords had stolen from Missy.

Ready.

Himself blinked the sequence to flood his brainspace with Coma2 and immediately felt the effects of entering zerotime. Up ahead, Crewcut appeared to freeze mid-jump over a particularly nasty pothole, legs splayed, dreadlocks thrust outward like a nest of data cables, left ankle rotating imperceptibly slow to absorb a landing that would never come.

Aim.

The effects of zerotime would only last a nanosecond. Now or never.

Fire.

Dick Himself drove his skates sideways and ripped into soft concrete as the old highway disappeared in a flash of fire and rain. His earplants auto'd out most of the boom, but between the recoil of the X-Tips and the rapid concussive blasts ahead, Dick Himself's brains were bouncing back and forth in his skull like Crewcut's dreads a second ago. The NutGun had done its job. Black smoked choked Himself's nostrils.

So long, Lester Crewcut. You fucked with the wrong freemeat. Now to find out what was so important to get Himself out of bed at 6pm. In the rain, no less.

Louddetective - 2017-05-08 Two Jar Slave, take these stars and pray continue

"It's eight ninety-three, Dick. Coma or no Coma, it's time to get your bare ass up off the floor."

Dick Himself groped under the bedsheet for his NutGun, then relaxed. The enhanced voice was unmistakably Missy Yssim, but Himself's first question wasn't how she'd managed to shinobi through his sensenet--not to mention the freight elevator that served as his front door--without triggering his autowake. No, Himself's mind was scrambling out of a nasty schizo dream, the kind he only caught after flooding Coma2, so his first question came blurting out of the dreamscape like gas after Uncle Bingwen's greasy schezwan:

"What new maggot is this that has come into my head to-day?" he moaned. Missy bluescreened, staring at him peculiarly beneath her violet bangs.

"Now just what did you say?"

Dick Himself pressed the heels of his palms against his faceplants and thought: clean slate, clean slate. After a long breath, he blinked the sequence to flood his brainspace with Uptick and threw back the bedsheet. "Don't log it, Missy. Just dreamspeak. Still a bit mashed from the bump with our friend Lester, yesterday."

"Yesterday?" Missy's mirror-black eyes showed a hint of concern, the kind of look that made Himself regret ever installing the NutGun. "You're flooding so much I'm worried you'll drown. It's Ninesday. You've been splashed out for almost 300 hours."

Three days? That wasn't to spec--not at all. Was she leading him? Missy Yssim was a nano piece of freemeat female, every aug labouring to enhance her natural sex appeal, and her deceptiveness. (Buzzkill had once explained that her old quaints gave her the name Missy after she'd disappeared into the Accent Emporium one morning and come out sprawling over her vowels like a proper southern belle. Somehow, with the purple bob, jet-black eyes, and leather kimono, she made it work.) Missy was known to lead a corper scumbag for a few creds or a laugh, but a rapid series of blinks displayed the current time on Himself's eyeshade and confirmed what she'd said: three goddamn days. The X-Tips must have rattled him worse than he'd thought. Or maybe he really was starting to drown?

"Don't log it," Himself said again. Then he remembered his second question. "How'd you get past my sensenet, anyway?"

Missy laughed. "You're the deadest freemeat I know--on skates. But your code is unclinical, full of personality. Anyone who knows your sense of humour could have cracked that net."

Missy clucked her tongue and tossed something to Himself--the scorched datavault he'd ripped out of Lester Crewcut's skull three days ago; a strand of blue hair still clung to it. "I've been jacked into that. Thanks, by the way."

"Anything interesting?" Dick asked as he stretched in front of the sloping floor-to-ceiling windows. A corper family lived in the apartment facing his, normal peepmeat, life contracts, with two licensed kids and minimal hances that followed the strict regulations enforced by Horizon Standard's army of railpigs. He hated the family on principle, and sometimes wondered if they felt the same way about the mashed-up gearhead they glimpsed moving in the dark like a feral cat.

"Doesn't shock me," Himself yawned, shuffling toward the only real piece of furniture in the apartment, a one-tonne chrome espresso machine. Uptick did the job, but it lacked aroma. "What'd he have? Head full of protocode? Rival quarterlies?"

"'Antonio d'Orso, a learned and worthy prelate, being Bishop of Florence, there came thither a Catalan gentleman, called Messer Dego della Ratta, marshal for King Robert'," drawled Missy as Himself passed her a cup. "Or how about this: 'Next is that bright radiance, rich in hope and healing for the sons of men, which is called Jove's star; then one fiery red and dreaded by the world, which you call Mars'."

"That supposed to register?"

"It's all like that, and there's a massive amount of it. Megs and megs of old-fashioned corpspeak. Now, you know that I grease to old-fashioned, but something about this stuff spooks me. It's hiding something, but I don't know what. Dick," she said, touching his arm, "I want to take it to The Point."

Dick Himself stiffened. "Thought you could crack any crypt."

"This isn't an old quaint's sensenet. The surface language is weird, organic, almost--thoughtful. I know it doesn't make sense. But I wager The Point can register it."

"No."

Missy squinted her black eyes. "That thing you said before you Upticked, the thing about the maggot?"

"Dreamspeak. You said yourself I was flooded." Himself had instinctively moved away, began pulling on his overclothes. "Not that I give a shit, but--why?"

"I read the same thing in Crewcut's vault a couple hours ago."

"What?" Dick Himself swiped the datavault into his wall terminal and, with Missy's guidance, scanned its surface.

"This again was reported to the Abbot, who fell a-pondering in himself and saying, 'Alack, what new maggot is this that is come into my head to-day? What avarice! What despite! And for whom?'"

It wasn't possible, but it was true: somehow in his Coma2 schizo sleep Dick had been dreaming about Crewcut's datavault. Suddenly Dick felt like he was back on the highway doing 108, only this time he was headed straight down. Clean slate, he told himself. Clean slate.

"Something's going on, Dick. I think we have to log it."

Himself stood by the elevator for a long nanosecond. Missy was right. But to send her to jack in with The Point again after all these years? It didn't level with him.

"Grab my cases. We'll go see The Point together. But getting there won't be easy."

"Smartslugs, Spicers, or...?"

"All of it. Lester Crewcut's not the only one who can roll heavy." With a metallic clank, Dick Himself called the elevator.

MurgatroidMendelbaum - 2017-05-08 He lived long enough to grow old?
That means he was human all along.

William Burns - 2017-05-08 It means Jar Jar was Darth Palpatine the whole time. Why do you think you almost never saw them in the same scene?

SolRo - 2017-05-08 We might assume that movie replicants age if they aren't made with an expiration date.

But their design varies greatly from source material book and movie.

badideasinaction - 2017-05-09 On one hand, I'd rather them not make it. On the other, the names they've lined up to do this one are about as good as one could ask for, so fingers crossed.

StanleyPain - 2017-05-09 Pretty much my feelings. And seeing what Scott is doing to the Alien universe, I am really glad this film was handed over to actual filmmakers. (Scott was originally going to direct this one and only produce Alien Covenant)

Mister Yuck - 2017-05-09 I thought Prometheus was directed well enough, it's just the script was about 70/30 gibberish and cliches.

BHWW - 2017-05-09 Wow, it looks like the original, only crappier and copious CGI. You can practically see the studio notes with each shot.

The second I saw Leto's face I know this was going to stink. Then you hear him make some mysterious speech as they show a replicant "birthing". Crap ideas being stacked upon each other.